to
the calculation any but the chief officers of the several Departments,
it will be found that provisional appointments to fill vacancies were
made to the number of 179 from the commencement of General Jackson's
Administration to the close of General Pierce's. This number would
probably be greatly increased if all the cases which occurred in the
subordinate offices and bureaus were added to the count. Some of them
were made while the Senate was in session; some which were made in
vacation were continued in force long after the Senate assembled.
Sometimes the temporary officer was the commissioned head of another
Department, sometimes a subordinate in the same Department. Sometimes
the affairs of the Navy Department have been directed _ad interim_ by a
commodore and those of the War Department by a general. In most, if not
all, of the cases which occurred previous to 1852 it is believed that
the compensation provided by law for the officer regularly commissioned
was paid to the person who discharged the duties _ad interim_. To give
the Senate a more detailed and satisfactory view of the subject, I send
the accompanying tabular statement, certified by the Secretary of State,
in which the instances are all set forth in which provisional as well as
permanent appointments were made to the highest executive offices from
1829 nearly to the present time, with their respective dates.

It must be allowed that these precedents, so numerous and so long
continued, are entitled to great respect, since we can scarcely suppose
that the wise and eminent men by whom they were made could have been
mistaken on a point which was brought to their attention so often. Still
less can it be supposed that any of them willfully violated the law or
the Constitution.

The lawfulness of the practice rests upon the exigencies of the public
service, which require that the movements of the Government shall not be
arrested by an accidental vacancy in one of the Departments; upon an act
of Congress expressly and plainly giving and regulating the power, and
upon long and uninterrupted usage of the Executive, which has never been
challenged as illegal by Congress.

This answers the inquiry of the Senate so far as it is necessary to show
"how and by whom the duties of said office are now discharged." Nor is
it necessary to explain further than I have done "how, when, and by what
authority" the provisional appointment has been made; but the resolution
mak